se of much perplexity, embarrassment, and difficulty,
especially to the younger clergy and to those about to enter into Holy
Orders."

Much doubt was entertained, whether this motion came within the terms of
the Commission. It was not pressed by the Dean.

I give the following quotation from the speech:--

... "And if I venture to question the expediency, the wisdom, I will say
the righteousness of retaining subscription to the thirty-nine Articles
as obligatory on all clergymen, I do so, not from any difficulty in
reconciling with my own conscience what, during my life, I have done
more than once, but from the deep and deliberate conviction that such
subscription is altogether unnecessary as a safeguard for the essential
doctrines of Christianity, which are more safely and fully protected by
other means. It never has been, is not, and never will be a solid
security for its professed object, the reconciling or removing religious
differences, which it tends rather to create and keep alive; is
embarrassing to many men who might be of the most valuable service in
the ministry of the Church; is objectionable as concentrating and
enforcing the attention of the youngest clergy on questions, some
abstruse, some antiquated, and in themselves at once so minute and
comprehensive as to harass less instructed and profound thinkers, to
perplex and tax the sagacity of the most able lawyers and the most
learned divines....

"One of my chief objections to subscription to the thirty-nine Articles
as a perpetual test of English Churchmanship is that they are throughout
controversial, and speak, as of necessity they must speak, the
controversial language of their day; they cannot, therefore, in my
opinion, be fully, clearly, and distinctly understood without a careful
study and a very wide knowledge of the disputes and opinions of those
times, a calm yet deep examination of their meaning, objects,
limitations, which cannot be expected from young theological students,
from men fresh from their academical pursuits. I venture to add, indeed
to argue, that their true bearing and interpretation seems to me to have
escaped some of our most eminent judges from want of that full study and
perfect knowledge; and I must say that, in these laborious and practical
day, it may be questioned whether this study of controversies, many of
them bygone, will be so useful, so profitable, as entire devotion to the
plainer and simpler duties of the clergym